Looking at projections for how the Blue Jays season will go
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Mar 26, 2025, 14:30 EDTUpdated: Mar 26, 2025, 14:24 EDT
The American League East is the most competitive division in all of baseball, potentially the most competitive division of all time.
All five teams – the Toronto Blue Jays, the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Tampa Bay Rays all have a realistic chance of winning the division to varying degrees.
The Blue Jays have gotten better heading into 2025, rebuilding their bullpen from the ground up, adding some pop in the lineup, adding an experienced starting pitcher, and relying on guys like Bo Bichette to have a bounce back season.
Like the Blue Jays, the Red Sox got better, while the Yankees lost Juan Soto (and added Devin Williams and Max Fried) and the Orioles lost Corbin Burnes and Anthony Santander, the latter to the Jays.
That begs the question: where are the Blue Jays projected to finish in the American League East this coming season?
Fangraphs projection
Fangraphs’ projection acknowledges the fact that the American League East is going to be a dogfight. Of the five teams in the division, the site projects that no team will win more than 86 games in the division while no team will win fewer than 82 games. There’s no punching bag in the division like there was with the Orioles just a few years ago, or how the AL Central has the Chicago White Sox.
With that being said, Fangraphs projects the Blue Jays to finish with an 83-79 record, tied for third-best in the division with the Orioles. The Yankees are projected to win the division with an 86-76 record while the Red Sox are projected to have an 85-77 record.
Although they are fourth in the division, it doesn’t mean that the Jays wouldn’t make the playoffs in this scenario. Boston would take the first Wild Card spot, but there are three other teams projected to finish with an 83-79 record – the Orioles, Texas Rangers, and Houston Astros.
At that point, who knows how the tiebreaker would come down, but they’re projected to score 4.53 runs a game and allow 4.40 runs per game.
Baseball Prospectus projection
Like Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus projects the Blue Jays and the rest of the American League East to be tight. The site has the Blue Jays finishing third in the division with an 85-77 record, tied with the Yankees.
However, the two teams would be fighting for the third and final Wild Card spot, as they project the Rangers will finish first in the American League West, followed by the Mariners and the Astros, finishing with 87 wins.
In the AL East, the Orioles are expected to win the division with an 87-75 record, while the Rays have an 83-79 record and the Red Sox are projected to have an 80-82 record.
Baseball Reference projection
Moving to the less-than-kind projections, Baseball Reference has the Blue Jays finishing with a division-worst 77-85 record, with the Yankees taking the division thanks to an 84-78 record. This is to once again say that the division will be tight, but the site believes the Blue Jays to be the worst team in the division.
Their projected best record is 88-74, which would surely get them into a Wild Card spot, while their worst projected record is 67-95. The latter just doesn’t seem possible with the additions they made in the off-season, as well as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette being in contract seasons.
In terms of their chances of winning the World Series, Baseball Reference gives them 0.4% odds, which obviously isn’t good, but every other worst team in the division has below 0.1% odds of winning the World Series… so that’s something.
The Athletic’s Keith Law’s projection
Lastly, The Athletic’s Keith Law, who is usually rather kind to the Blue Jays, projects them to finish with a division-worst 77-85 record. Unlike Baseball Reference, who has the teams being rather close despite the Jays having a losing record, Law predicts the Jays will finish 14 games behind the division leaders, the Red Sox.
His reasoning is this: The team is competitive in other divisions, but not the American League East. The bullpen is better, but they didn’t do enough to satisfy fans.
I think they did. Adding a player with the third-most home runs fixes a problem they’ve had for the past two seasons. They fixed their bullpen with the re-acquisition of Jeff Hoffman and Yimi García, while also acquiring Nick Sandlin. They also added a winner in Max Scherzer to fill a need in the rotation.
Is it enough? Time will tell, as another power bat (Pete Alonso) would’ve been ideal. Still, with Bichette likely returning to himself, that’ll give them quite a bit more wins than last season. The 2025 Blue Jays are a similar the same team from two seasons ago when they won 89 games to clinch a post-season berth.
Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Blue Jays Nation, Oilersnation, and FlamesNation. They can be followed on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.